The hate underlying the “__ Girl series” and criticism of women's organizations
By Park Heejung
Published: April 23, 2012
Translated by Marilyn Hook
Last week, another "__ Girl"
incident swept across the internet. This
time it was "Bus Kneel Girl."
The source of the incident was a post a
man made on his Facebook page. A bus
departing Busan for Seoul at 5:45 p.m. broke down, causing passengers to wait
for three hours on the highway and finally arrive in Seoul at 2 a.m.
In the words of the man who wrote the
post, the enraged passengers demanded "compensation," making "a
foolish fuss all together," and one of them, a "rude woman,"
said, "Get on your knees and apologize."
This story and a photo of a man who
appears to be a bus company employee kneeling in front of a young woman spread
through the Internet. Because of the
overtones of "It wasn't that big of a problem but she overdid and made him
kneel," in the original post, people immediately jumped to criticize this
woman.
Truth of incident
differed from the rumor
Not long after this post spread, a
person who claimed to be a witness to the incident appeared on an Internet
community. On the 19th, SBS News
interviewed the witness and the bus company employee, and the explanations of
both sides were in agreement. However, the witness's explanation was very
different from the story of the man who had uploaded the picture.
According to the witness, this company
was running a "broken bus" in the first place, and in the end, the
bus was stopped for around two hours on the shoulder of a highway. In the dark nighttime, mostly trucks were
coming and going, and to make matters worse, the shoulder on which the bus was
stopped was like a cliff. The nervous
passengers asked for a reserve bus to be sent, but the company said that there
weren't any and did repairs, and the bus finally managed to depart three hours
after it had stopped.
A highway shoulder is a dangerous place
on which nearly 30 people have fatal accidents every year. What's more, in the case of an accident, the
fatality rate is estimated to be 42%. As
passengers were left in this kind of place for three hours, unable to come or
go, it is clearly a situation in which the bus company should feel a great
sense of responsibility. It was a
terrifying situation in which at first there was the vehicle maintenance
problem, and then in which if an accident had happened on the road, many lives
could have been lost.
However, when the passengers arrived in
Seoul, a manager at the bus company, without an apology, told them to leave
their contact information and go home and the company would refund the bus fare
plus 10,000 won (about $9) for a taxi.
The passengers demanded an apology, but they said the manager gave an
insincere one that left them feeling they "were the wrongdoers
instead," and that the manager was “unashamed.”
Isn't it natural for all of the
passengers, who had "the feeling of having come back from the dead,"
to complain? They say that one woman
told him to apologize sincerely and the command to kneel and apologize came
from someone else. The manager said,
"I won't. Sue me if you want,"
and another bus company employee who thought the situation needed to be
rectified suddenly kneeled - at which point the picture in question was taken.
The disparagement of
women contained in the "__ Girl series"
As the actions of the bus company which
had put passengers in danger and then hadn't intended to give a genuine apology
became known, the criticism of "Bus Kneel Girl" disappeared as if it
had never existed.
The man who had made the post that
distorted the circumstances of the incident had bragged to his friends on a
social networking service, "I created the __ Girl series, my mini-homepage
has thousands of visitors"; after the SBS News broadcast, he deleted his
account and disappeared.
Because he caused this much societal
criticism, he has earned being called "__ Guy." There is practically silence, though. How strange.
This man singled out this young woman,
who was slender and dressed like quite a "youthful miss," among the
many complaining passengers, and took the trouble to take the picture and post
it. Why would he have done that?
The answer can be found in the man's
remark, "I created the __ Girl series." It is probably not only women who cause
problems in the world, but on the Internet there is such a long line of “__
Girls” that it gave birth to a series.
As for “__ Guys,” perhaps only "Thoughtless Blunt Speech Guy"
is somewhat famous.
People who ask,
"What is it that women's organizations do?"
The “__ Girl” trend has been
characterized as “hatred of women” that is showing itself on the Internet. This hatred of women, currently widespread in
that medium, also reveals itself in the criticism of the Ministry of Gender
Equality and women’s organizations.
Every time that incidents involving
women, like abused actress’ Jang Ja-Yeon’s suicide, the problem of the Japanese
army’s comfort women, or crimes of sexual violence, become societal issues,
women’s organizations and the Ministry of Gender Equality always come under
attack. The criticism sounds like this:
“What the heck are you all doing?”
When people ask what it is that women’s
organizations do for women who have been wronged, the simplest answer is this:
that you have heard about these women’s rights issues is the achievement of
these women’s groups’ activities.
Take the problem of Japanese army’s
“comfort women.” For the half-century
since liberation, these “comfort women” victims have been called tarnished
women by a patriarchal society and have had to hush the matter up and live with
no financial support. Without the courage of the now-elderly “comfort women”
victims and the persistence of the women who wanted to reveal the truth, this
matter would not have become known to the world. There would not have been over 20 years of
struggle and collective action.
How about the problem of sexual
violence? The places that give actual
support and help to victims of sexual violence are the private organizations
and institutions concerned with sexual violence - which are the same “women’s
organizations” being asked, “What is it that you do?” as criticism. Out of sight, they give support to victims
and work ceaselessly to change the legal system and societal perceptions. They share the victims’ pain, and once in a
while they endure receiving direct threats from the assailants.
Think about it. Just ten or twenty years ago, there was no
concept of “workplace sexual harassment” in our country. It is not a satisfactory standard, but at
least the fact that there is now a channel for receiving legal remedy for this
violation of rights is a big change. Do
you think this is something that naturally appeared one day?
There is no need to write down here all
of the things that women’s organizations have done, one after another, to
inform you. If you really are curious,
you can find out through a few article searches, or go to the “record of
activities” section of a women’s organization’s website. To attack with criticism without
understanding the facts just increases rumors like that about the “Bus Kneel
Girl.”
Making a reason
because of resentment an attribute of “hatred”
It seems like there would be a rational
reason for hatred, but if we probe into it, what they call reasons are usually
very superficial. For the most part, it
is not a case in which the reason preceded hatred, it is a case in which hatred
came first and the reason was created to justify it. That is because that is an attribute of
hatred.
With the 4/11 Election Day for the
National Assembly weeks ahead, hatred of Philippine-born naturalized Korean
citizen Jasmine Lee, the Saenuri Party’s 15th candidate by proportional
representation, spread and became a controversy. False policies that were not hers were
created and circulated, and criticism of her became fiercer on the grounds of
those “policies.”
When there was a severe earthquake in
eastern Japan in the 1920s, the Japanese spread false rumors that ethnic Korean
residents had poisoned wells in the area.
On the basis of those rumors, ethnic Koreans were slaughtered
indiscriminately. The Nazi’s false
rumors that Jews were lecherous, money-grubbing, and corrupt became grounds for
the Holocaust.
Believing unconfirmed rumors that make
us chuckle, like that women’s groups demanded a ban on the sale of Joripong, a
snack food, because it looks like a woman’s genitals, and then getting in line
to criticize is something that happens because a person was displeased with the
target from the beginning.
They intend to criticize for the sake
of criticizing, and so even after reading Ilda articles in which women’s
organizations are criticizing the irresponsible actions of the police in the
Suwon murder case, they put on an act of criticizing, asking, “What do women’s
groups do?”
The road away from hatred is about
examining your own heart. If, when you
see women, you are burning to curse at them, or when women’s organizations are
mentioned you feel a surge of anger and want to ask what those places do, stop
your criticism for a moment and take some time for self-reflection. It is also essential to put in a degree of
effort that includes trying to grasp the basic facts. If you do that, you will be able to rid
yourself to some extent of that hatred that is distressing you.
*Original article:
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